Wear-resistant, superabrasive compacts are utilized in a variety of mechanical applications. For example, polycrystalline diamond compacts (“PDCs”) are used in drilling tools (e.g., cutting elements, gage trimmers, etc.), machining equipment, bearing apparatuses, wire-drawing machinery, and in other mechanical apparatuses.
PDCs have found particular utility as superabrasive cutting elements in rotary drill bits, such as roller cone drill bits and fixed cutter drill bits. A PDC cutting element typically includes a superabrasive diamond layer (also known as a diamond table). The diamond table is formed and bonded to a substrate using an ultra-high pressure, ultra-high temperature (“HPHT”) process. The PDC cutting element may also be brazed directly into a preformed pocket, socket, or other receptacle formed in the bit body. The substrate may be often brazed or otherwise joined to an attachment member, such as a cylindrical backing. A rotary drill bit typically includes a number of PDC cutting elements affixed to the bit body. It is also known that a stud carrying the PDC may be used as a PDC cutting element when mounted to a bit body of a rotary drill bit by press-fitting, brazing, or otherwise securing the stud into a receptacle formed in the bit body.
Conventional PDCs are normally fabricated by placing a cemented-carbide substrate into a container or cartridge with a volume of diamond particles positioned adjacent to a surface of the cemented-carbide substrate. A number of such cartridges may be loaded into a HPHT press. The substrates and volume of diamond particles are then processed under HPHT conditions in the presence of a catalyst material that causes the diamond particles to bond to one another to form a matrix of bonded diamond grains defining a polycrystalline diamond (“PCD”) table. The catalyst material is often a metal-solvent catalyst, such as cobalt, nickel, iron, or alloys thereof that is used for promoting intergrowth of the diamond particles.
In one conventional approach for forming a PDC, a constituent of the cemented-carbide substrate, such as cobalt from a cobalt-cemented tungsten carbide substrate, liquefies and sweeps from a region adjacent to the volume of diamond particles into interstitial regions between the diamond particles during the HPHT process. The cobalt acts as a solvent catalyst to promote intergrowth between the diamond particles, which results in formation of bonded diamond grains. A solvent catalyst may be mixed with the diamond particles prior to subjecting the diamond particles and substrate to the HPHT process.
In another conventional approach for forming a PDC, a sintered PCD table may be separately formed and then leached to remove solvent catalyst from interstitial regions between bonded diamond grains. The leached PCD table may be simultaneously HPHT bonded to a substrate and infiltrated with a non-catalyst material, such as silicon, in a separate HPHT process. The silicon may infiltrate the interstitial regions of the sintered PCD table from which the solvent catalyst has been leached and react with the diamond grains to form silicon carbide.
Despite the availability of a number of different PCD materials, manufacturers and users of PCD materials continue to seek PCD materials that exhibit improved toughness, wear resistance, and/or thermal stability.